Walnut, Calif. – For the Mt. San Antonio College Men's Swim and Dive Team, the 2026 season ended with a moment the program had never experienced before: a state championship.

This spring, in one of the wildest finishes in California community college swimming history, the Mounties finally got it.

Not alone — but alongside six-time defending champion Sierra College — in the first tie in state championship history.

"We're still trying to figure out how it went down," Head Coach Marc Ruh said with a laugh.

Going into the meet, he believed the Mounties had a chance, but knew the field was unusually balanced.

"There were like five or six teams that could be in the running," he said. "Normally there is one team that is really strong. So, we kinda felt like — hey, we've got a shot at this."

The Mounties knew they would need depth to outdo teams with strong top-end scoring, particularly Sierra as well as American River's diving squad.

"We had to overcome American River who had six divers on the three meter and four divers on the one meter," Marc said. "Which is massive. They called themselves their air assault."

At the end of both Day 1 and Day 2, the Mounties sat in fourth place.

"But it was moving around throughout the day," Marc said. "We were placing third, second, first."

Despite the standings, the coaching staff believed the final day would favor Mt. SAC's strengths.

"We went into the third and final day knowing it was going to be our strongest day," he said. "It's our distance."

The Mounties had depth in the mile and multiple swimmers capable of scoring across events.

"We had two in almost every event," Marc said. "Some of the other schools only had one. So we knew we had a good shot at it."

The 2026 3C2A State Championships came down to the final relay, the final points, and ultimately the smallest of margins. Mt. SAC entered the final event leading by 13 points, but with relay scoring doubled, nobody knew whether it would hold.

"There were so many different scenarios that could have panned out," Marc said. "So we were like, okay — let's just see how it unfolds."

Sophomore Luke Marsden was doing calculations in the back room to see how each team would need to place in the final relay for Mt. SAC to swim away with the win.

"I was just doing math," he said with a laugh.

With team standouts Luke Marsden, Cooper Golling and Lincoln Jones participating in the final relay, they all had their different take on the nerve-racking situation.

"I saw that we were in eighth and that Sierra was winning by a lot," Marsden said. "I thought it was over. Then Lincoln caught the Orange Coast guy all the way across the pool," Marsden said.

For Jones, the moments surrounding the final relay remain a blur.

"I feel like I kind of blacked out," he said. "When I touched the board in the last relay, I thought we had done it."

Mt. SAC swam well in the final relay — well enough to break a school record — but still finished seventh in the heat. At first, nobody knew if it would be enough.

Then came the confusion.

Assistant coach Lani Ruh remembers staring at the scoreboard, wondering if the Mounties had somehow been disqualified.

"We had DQ'd in conference a couple weekends before," she said. "So we were looking on the board like, 'Oh my Gosh, is that us?' But it wasn't us."

Instead, another team's disqualification bumped Mt. SAC from eighth to seventh overall.

Still, nobody knew officially.

"And it went dead silent," Marc Ruh recalled. "Everybody was on their phone. Refresh. Refresh. Refresh. Refresh."

Finally, the scores appeared.

"421. 421. We're tied!!!!!"

Lani remembers the swimmers floating in the water waiting for confirmation.

"Our boys were in the water looking at us like, 'Did we do enough? Did we do it?'" she said. "And then we told them, 'You got it — in a tie.'"

Golling remembers staring at Marc's face while waiting in the pool for confirmation.

"We all looked up at Marc's face," he said. "And his face kind of had this grin. And that's the moment we knew."

The emotions that followed are difficult for him to fully describe.

"I've never felt that feeling before," Golling said. "That proudness. That relief."

The pressure of the meet had weighed heavily on the team all weekend.

"There were some sleepless nights at that meet," he admitted. "Where I think all of us were just up thinking about — are we gonna do it?"

What happened after the final score had been tallied perfectly captured the spirit of the meet.

"The boys wanted to go hug the Sierra guys," Lani said. "So we were like, just go!"

Some coaches initially thought the two teams were taunting each other before realizing both programs were celebrating together.

For Mt. SAC, the championship represented years of climbing closer to the top. The Mounties had finished third at the state meet three consecutive years entering 2026.

"The gap had been getting narrower and narrower," Marc said. "It feels good."

The title was not built on overwhelming star power. In fact, the Mounties won just one individual event all weekend: freshman Lincoln Jones capturing the 200 backstroke state championship.

Instead, the victory came through depth.

"It was a complete team win," Lani said. "Every point mattered."

One point in particular nearly disappeared. Marsden was initially moved from fourth to fifth place in the 100 breaststroke because of a clerical mistake before officials corrected the scoring.

"But without that point," Lani said, "we don't tie."

The team also had to overcome adversity before the meet even began. One qualifier broke his hand just a week before state, forcing the rest of the roster to compensate.

"It didn't really change the psyche of the team," Lani said. "But they were like, okay — we have to do a little bit more."

That mentality defined the Mounties all season long.

"Right from the very start, we set goals as a team," Jones said. "Every single day we pushed each other."

Jones, who set multiple school records during the season, called the championship run "magical."

"Everything we said we wanted to do, we did," he said.

Distance swimmer Cooper Golling became one of the leaders, offering encouragement behind the team's belief heading into the final day.

"We just went in with the mindset of — we are in the right spot," Golling said. "This is our day. We know what events we're good in. This is the fun part. Let's go out there and perform – show everybody what we've got."

For Marsden, the team's success came from accountability and closeness beyond the pool.

"If I'm not at practice, I'm getting a text like, 'Where are you? Why are you late?'" he said. "Everybody holding each other accountable really helped me and made me a lot better."

That accountability eventually transformed into a bond much deeper than teammates.

"It's meant a lot," Marsden said of his time at Mt. SAC. "Everybody has been so friendly and kind. The team atmosphere has just been great."

Unlike previous teams he had been part of, Marsden said the relationships extended far beyond practice.

"We're in the hot tub every day after practice talking, we're going to breakfast and lunch, we are hanging out outside," he said. "It's like a family. Not just like these are my teammates and I swim with them. This is really all my best friends."

Golling agreed.

"This is the most I've felt like in a family on a team," he said. "We are all brothers."

Jones, who originally planned to swim at Concordia before that program was cut, called Mt. SAC "hands down the best decision I've ever made."

"They took us in like we were family from day one," he said. "Giving us all the opportunity we need and pushing us to be great every day."

Jones credited both Marc and Lani Ruh for creating a culture where every athlete felt valued.

"Even from the guys who are winning conference and winning state to the guys who aren't quite qualifying — they're bringing everybody together," he said. "Nobody is better than one another. We are all great. We are all a team. We are all a family."

That culture, both coaches believe, is what ultimately carried the Mounties to history.

Lani Ruh, who joined the aquatics teams in 2013 and helped transform both the men's and women's teams, emphasized the importance of supporting athletes beyond the pool deck.

"They all come from different backgrounds," she said. "Sometimes it breaks my heart to hear where they've come from. They come here and I just want to try and help them… so they know they can be whatever they want to be."

Marc Ruh credits much of the program's growth to her influence.

"She's really changed the whole dynamic of what we do here," he said.

For Marc, whose father, Don Ruh, won four state championships as a Mt. SAC track and field coach, finally adding a swim title to the family legacy carried special meaning.

"You always want that state championship," he said. "The success of the school is so great that you never want to feel like you're not contributing to that."

Lani said the program's success reflects the standards surrounding Mt. SAC Athletics as a whole.

"We are so well supported," she said. "It's that whole thing about 'The Mt. SAC Way.' The bar is high, and we always wanted to get to that."

And while the Mounties officially share the title with Sierra, nobody inside the program views the accomplishment as anything less than historic.

"If we're going to tie somebody," Lani said, "that is a great team to tie."

The championship may have ended in a deadlock on paper, but inside the Mt. SAC program, the feeling was unmistakable.

Relief. Pride. Brotherhood. History.

"It was all worth it," Jones said. "Every single hard practice. Every single 6 a.m. workout we didn't want to do. It was all more than worth it."

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